WikiWords:Disambiguation
Disambiguation in WikiWords is the process of resolving ambiguity—meaning the confusion that occurs when articles about two or more different topics have the same "natural" title. In other words, disambiguations are types of "forks in the road" that lead to different meanings of a related word. Two different methods of disambiguating are discussed here: disambiguation links and disambiguation pages. In the first case, an article discussing one particular meaning of a term has a link at the top, pointing the user to another page with a similar title. A disambiguation page contains no article content, only links to other WikiWords pages. When to disambiguate Disambiguation serves a single purpose: to let the reader choose among different pages that might reside under the same title. Do not disambiguate, or add a link to a disambiguation page, if there is no risk of confusion. Ask yourself: When a reader enters this term and pushes "Go", what article would they realistically be expecting to view as a result? Disambiguation pages are not search indices — do not add links that merely contain part of the page title where there is no significant risk of confusion. Disambiguation links When a user searches for a particular term, they may have something else in mind than what actually comes up. In this case, a friendly link to the alternate article is placed at the top. If there is more than one such alternative page, create a link to a disambiguation page (see below). Disambiguation pages These have links only, like this: Blah may mean: *Blah (book) *Blah (movie) *Blah (video game) A disambiguation page may have a name like Blah (disambiguation) or may be named after the general term Blah; see page naming, below. *Put the article title in bold as an intro. *Start each line with the link to the target page. *Don't wikilink any other words. *Only include references to related subject articles if the term in question actually is described on that page. *Include the template at the bottom. You may want to disambiguate on the same page: *''TITLE'' and Title *''Title'' town and Title township What NOT to put on disambiguation pages Disambiguation pages are not intended for games of "free association". Please use them carefully and only when needed. Examples On a page called Title, generally do not disambiguate: * Title County * Title City * Title Hospital * Title University "Title Island", "Title River" or "River Title" may be worth listing in cases where the "Island"/"River" part is often omitted. In most cases, do not list names of which Title is a part, unless the persons are very frequently referred to simply by their first or last name (e.g. Galileo, Shakespeare). Redlinks Adding links to non-existent articles ("redlinks") should be done with care. There is no need to brainstorm all occurrences of the page title and create redlinks to articles that are unlikely ever to be written, or if they are, likely to be removed. For example, quite a few names will show up as song titles, but with few exceptions, we usually do not write articles about individual songs, so there is no point in linking to them. If you must add this type of information, be sure to link to at least one existing article (band, album, etc.). Do include a redlink when another article links to the ambiguous article (a list of links to an article can be obtained using Special:What links here) with none of the disambiguation options in mind. Page naming Some topics have a primary topic which editors agree is the primary meaning for the term (Rome, for example). In this case the disambiguation page is named Rome (disambiguation), and the primary topic keeps the topic word or phrase. Ensure that the disambiguation page links not to the primary meaning, but to an unambiguous meaning (Rome, Italy rather than Rome, for example). The ambiguous meaning might redirect to the unambiguous meaning, or visa versa. In other cases, where there is no such consensus, disambiguation pages are named after the topic itself (Table, for example). Fixing links to disambiguated topics A code of honor for creating disambiguation pages is to fix the mis-directed links that will be created when the disambiguation page is made. Before creating a disambiguation page, click on "What links here" to find all the pages that link to the page you are about to change. Make sure those pages are fixed or that they won't be adversely affected before you do the split. Links to disambiguation pages There is rarely any need for links directly to disambiguation pages—except from the primary topic, if any—in most cases links should point to the article that deals with the specific meaning intended, and not to a disambiguation page. Before making a page into a disambiguation page one should first look at each page that links to it (using the "pages that link here" feature of the software) and correct the links as appropriate. Of course, the whole point of making a disambiguation page is so that accidental links made to it will make sense, so it's not a major problem if there are still links to it.